Foreign students returning

WELLINGTON: Polytechnics are reporting early signs that the critical Indian market for international students is starting to bounce back.

Foreign enrolments all but ceased at the start of the pandemic, reopening fully only at the start of this month.

Now tertiary institutions and schools are trying to recruit students and pupils and turn thousands of applications into enrolments, most of them for next year.

Christchurch Educated partnership manager Stefi Porter said the city welcomed 150 new foreign pupils yesterday and 200 tertiary students were arriving next week.

She said the region had 12,000 foreign students and pupils before the pandemic but it was not yet clear how many it might have next year.

Ms Porter said a lot depended on how quickly schools and other organisations could restart their systems for recruiting, enrolling and supporting international pupils and students but some Christchurch Educated members were getting a lot of applications.

‘‘It’s already possibly preCovid levels.’’

‘‘The feedback we’re getting from agents is that they’re having a huge amount of inquiries to come back to all sorts of levels, which is from primary schools through to tertiary.’’

Unitec and Manukau Institute of Technology deputy chief executive, Pasifika, partnerships and support Sam LotuIiga said some students were eager to get to New Zealand.

‘‘We had one student who just received confirmation of a visa and then basically flew the next day to attend a course this year rather than waiting for first semester next year .’’

The two Auckland polytechnics had received about 1800 applications but regarded only about 1000 of those as ‘‘live’’ because many students applied to several different institutions or countries.

They expected to enrol about 425 new fulltime foreign students next year, roughly half as many as preCovid19.

India was the No 1 market for polytechnics in recent years and there were fears changes to work and residence rights would deter many students.

Bay of Plenty and Rotorua Polytechnic international director Peter Richardson said figures from all 16 polytechnics indicated it was still a strong source of students.

‘‘India is still looking about 50%plus of our market in terms of applications, so it hasn’t changed in terms of the ratio, which we thought it would.’’

Mr Richardson said China was still the secondbiggest source of applications for polytechnics, but its share had reduced, apparently due to travel restrictions.

He said across all 16 polytechnics that comprised the national institute, Te Pukenga, there were about 2500 fulltime foreign students and it expected to have 45005000 next year. — RNZ